Jets' Aaron Glenn needs to practice what he preaches regarding QB Justin Fields
Aaron Glenn left QB Justin Fields in for the Jets' entire game in a 13-11 loss to the Broncos in London, a game where Fields finished with minus-10 yards net passing. Credit: AP
Aaron Glenn is so focused on convincing us all to “not let go of the rope” that he can’t see when it is time for him to do just that. The most important player on the field is an obvious anchor at the other end of the line.
He is so worried that a change at quarterback will demonstrate a weakness or an abandonment of his principles — whether it be an in-game switch in an attempt to give his team a spark or a long-term fix — that he won’t even allow himself to contemplate such a maneuver.
And he has become so blind and defensive regarding the reality that befell his Jets on Sunday in London — that they would have been better off and might have beaten the Broncos if they had competent quarterback play at just a few critical points, if they had avoided just one or two of the nine sacks they endured — that he can’t even understand the impulse to make the necessary personnel adjustment.
“What kind of question is that?” he snapped when asked right after Sunday’s 13-11 loss — in which the Jets had minus-10 net passing yards and no completion over 11 — if he would consider replacing starter Justin Fields.
It’s just the kind of question everyone who watched even a little bit of the game was asking.
Glenn gave a more nuanced answer to that point on Monday morning with the team having returned to its New Jersey facility.
“I thought about this a lot last night. I thought about the question that was asked,” he said. “When you look at what Justin did in the games that he played, I didn’t think he was bad at all. I actually thought he did some pretty good things in those four games. In this fifth game, he took a step back.
“I’m with you guys 100%. We can’t have that. We have to get better than that. And he knows that. He knows that better than anyone. [But] I don’t think you try to bench a player after having one true bad game because I thought in the other games, he played fairly well.”
That’s fine. That’s fair. If Glenn wants to maintain his loyalty to Fields as the starter going forward, it’s his right to do that as a head coach.
But he also has to be able to see when Fields’ play is crippling the team, when one player’s inability to do his job means the other 10 on the field with him and the other 52 on the roster with him had to fly home across an ocean in moribund silence.
And when that happens, it is on Glenn to make the adjustment.
There is a fine line between keeping the faith and being stubborn, and he was on the wrong side of that border this time.
He should have pulled the obviously struggling Fields and replaced him with backup Tyrod Taylor at some point in the second half on Sunday. It didn’t have to be a permanent move. It could have been limited to trying to salvage this game, to try to goose the offense into some semblance of competence.
If Glenn can’t do that the next time such a bold but obvious maneuver is called for, then maybe he isn’t ready to be the head coach he insists he is.
The odd part is that it actually shouldn’t have been a hard decision. It would have been the easy one. The obvious one.
There would have been two potential outcomes on Sunday.
The first: Taylor fails, in which case Glenn could have said he tried everything to win the game and reinstated Fields as the starter for this week’s game against the Panthers.
The second: Taylor succeeds and the Jets earn their first win of the season. It might have created a bit of a mess to clean up — “spillage on aisle seven” — and stoked a quarterback controversy, but hey, the Jets have that right now anyway.
What they don’t have is a win.
“I think that’s always an issue because now you start to bring in the dynamic of, man, the quarterback is always thinking, ‘Am I going to get pulled if things aren’t going right?’ ” Glenn said of sticking with Fields on Sunday.
Yes, the quarterback should be thinking he could get pulled if things aren’t going right. Or at least if they are going as badly as they were on Sunday, when the defense and special teams were all playing winning football and he was not.
Every player needs to understand those consequences. They are the ones Glenn has been preaching since he took over the job in January and reinforced harshly at various points along the way. The quarterback cannot be exempt from those standards.
Getting pulled from a game or losing a starting job doesn’t need to be a football death sentence. This Sunday the Jets will face a team that found itself in a similar place to where they are just about a year ago. The Panthers were floundering and decided to make a change at quarterback. A few weeks afterward, fate stepped in and Bryce Young returned to the starting job. He came back a much improved player and the Panthers, now fresh off a win over the Cowboys, are no longer the pushovers they were not long ago.
Glenn rightly noted that the main issue at play for the Jets on Sunday — the inability to get the ball out quickly on passing plays and avoid some of those nine sacks — wasn’t all on Fields. The blocking needed to be better. The receivers needed to be open more often.
Fields, though, played a big role in it. He appeared paralyzed by indecisiveness, so terrified of making a mistake that he took no risks at all. He hasn’t thrown an interception in his five games as a Jet, and in this odd universe in which the team exists, that’s a stat that carries a negative connotation.
At one point on Monday, Glenn lamented the quarterback holding the ball too long and being too cautious: “Man, you just have to give your guys a chance.”
The same goes for head coaches, Aaron. You didn’t do that this time. Next time make the necessary move, and that rope you want us all to hang on to — media, fans, players, even ownership — will become just a bit lighter.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
